Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It... makes the meanest of us sacred--it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust--the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;Call her one, me another fly,...We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,And we in us find the eagle and the doveThe phoenix riddle hath more witBy us; we two being one are it.So to one neutral thing both sexes fit,We die and rise the same, and proveMysterious by this love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »